Sunbelt Carries Weight Of U.s. Political Power

February 16, 1992|By WILLIAM E. GIBSON, Washington Bureau Chief

WASHINGTON -- A massive migration southward over the past two decades has shifted the nation`s political power to the Sunbelt, reshaping the presidential race as it whips through New Hampshire and heads for the Super Tuesday primaries next month.

The Sunbelt states, stretching from Florida to California, have gained 17 electoral votes this year and will send 17 more representatives to Congress.

The South holds 27 percent of the total electoral vote, the largest of any region and more than half the amount needed to win the presidency.

``Usually a backwater, the South has become the most important region in national politics, a trend-setter that sets the tone for the nation,`` said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta and author of the book, The Vital South; How Presidents Are Elected.

``These are the states you have to win in presidential elections, with Florida and Texas the most important,`` Black said.

The rise of the Sunbelt and its sprawling suburbs have helped Republicans usher in a conservative era with an espoused philosophy of low taxes and limited government. Yet all the presidential candidates from both parties, including President Bush, appear highly vulnerable in the growth region this year.

Economic woes, which have spread to the Sunbelt and to the middle class, have overshadowed racial divisions and all other issues. A weakened field of candidates faces an alienated electorate.

Returns from the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday will reveal the extent of the candidates` strengths and weaknesses.

Those results will shape the choices for voters in Florida and 10 other states on Super Tuesday, a series of party primaries on March 10. Led by Florida and Texas, the list includes eight Southern and border states.

If Bush is embarrassed in New Hampshire by a strong showing for Republican challenger Patrick Buchanan, the president will have to fall back on Florida and Texas, two of his strongest states, to shore up his campaign before the general election.

If Gov. Bill Clinton, D-Ark., falters in New Hampshire`s Democratic primary, the Democrats will move south without a clear front-runner. Clinton has been damaged by controversy over his attempts to elude military service and accusations of marital infidelity.

``We need to look at the candidates` respective strengths within their own party,`` says Candice Nelson, director of the Campaign Management Institute and associate professor of government at The American University.

A Clinton victory in New Hampshire would appear to make him almost unstoppable, she said. A strong Bush victory would brush aside Buchanan and improve the president`s chances of re-election in the fall.

When turning southward, the candidates will be courting voters concerned more than ever about the economy, military base closings, health care costs and environmental damage. Less preoccupied this year with racial matters, Southerners have taken up issues that once dominated the North, such as crime, immigration and protection of U.S. industries.

``For so long, political power has been skewed to the Northeast and West,`` said Joseph Westphal, director of the Sunbelt Institute, a research group founded by political leaders in Sunbelt states. ``We are hoping that additional votes in Congress and the Electoral College will mean we get more attention.``

Sunbelt representatives, for example, want financing to develop ports and clean up pollution along the Gulf of Mexico commensurate with the money that has been poured into the Great Lakes region. They also want more money for building roads, controlling the Southern borders and absorbing the cost of recent immigration.

The region`s representatives have begun to pull together, using the common bond of cultural and fiscal conservatism. Their clout has been strengthened through sheer numbers of new residents.

``Two big demographic trends of the last decade -- movement to the Sunbelt and to the suburbs -- have shaped our politics in almost every way,`` said William Schneider, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, an independent think tank.

``The Democrats are trying to change their image, talking about middle-class tax cuts, restoring their credibility as the party that can manage prosperity,`` Schneider said. ``It`s all an effort to remarket the party toward the middle class, people who live in the Sunbelt and the suburbs, where voters tend to be fiscally conservative and anti-taxes.``

These trends clearly have helped Republicans on all levels.

``Florida has been importing Republicans at the rate of a thousand a day,`` said Tom Cole, director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Though exaggerated by Cole, the migration of Northerners and Cubans to Florida has swelled his party`s ranks, broken the dominance of the Democratic Party and helped Republican candidates win the state in five of the last six presidential elections.